911 calls reveal fear, anger during Calif. rampage

This undated image provided by the Tustin Police Department shows Ali Syed, a suspect in a series of shootings Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013 in southern California. In less than an hour, Syed, an unemployed part-time student, shot and killed a woman in her home and two commuters during carjackings early Tuesday, shot up vehicles on a Southern California freeway and committed suicide as police closed in on him, authorities said. (AP Photo/Tustin Police Dept.)
— AP

This undated image provided by the Tustin Police Department shows Ali Syed, a suspect in a series of shootings Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013 in southern California. In less than an hour, Syed, an unemployed part-time student, shot and killed a woman in her home and two commuters during carjackings early Tuesday, shot up vehicles on a Southern California freeway and committed suicide as police closed in on him, authorities said. (AP Photo/Tustin Police Dept.)
/ AP

His parents did not recognize the woman who was shot to death in the Ladera Ranch home, he said.

Syed's parents called police at 4:45 a.m. Tuesday after hearing the gunshots, but Syed had already sped off in their black SUV.

Officials released the 911 call Syed's parents made as a dispatcher tried to elicit information from the shooter's panicked, sobbing mother as a house alarm blared in the background.

"I think somebody was shot," the mother said in her first comprehensible statement. "I heard a gunshot."

From Ladera Ranch, the gunman headed north and pulled off Interstate 5 in Tustin, about 20 miles away, with a flat tire, police said.

There he fired at and wounded a man in a car, then carjacked a vehicle from a man at a gas station and got back on the freeway, where he fired at commuters, authorities said.

The shooter then exited the freeway in nearby Santa Ana and carjacked a BMW, killing driver Melvin Lee Edwards, 69, of Laguna Hills.

Edwards served as a U.S. Army combat infantry officer in Vietnam and graduated from the University of Southern California, according to a biography on his company's website. He and his wife, Cheryl, had celebrated their 42nd anniversary on Feb. 12 and have two adult children, his brother-in-law, Jeff Osborn, told the AP in a phone interview.

"He was an extremely remarkable person. I know it's an old cliche, but he really did love life," he said. "The world's a lot smaller today for not having him here."

One 911 caller told a dispatcher she watched through her rear-view mirror as a man later identified as Edwards got shot and another caller reports that he's can see him lying near the off-ramp.

Syed took Edwards' BMW and next popped up at a Tustin business, where he shot and killed construction worker Jeremy Lewis, 26, of Fullerton. Lewis' co-worker rushed to intervene and was shot in the arm, authorities said.

Syed took the second construction worker's utility truck and fled to Orange.

He jumped from the moving truck at an intersection about five miles away as officers began to follow him and shot himself in the head.